Have you heard any of the most frantic, frenetic, dedicated birthers ask for the birth certificates of Newt Gingrich, Ron Paul, Mitt Romney or Rick Santorum?

Why all the tough questions for the Democrat, for the non-lunatic, for the Chicago guy, for the kid from the single-parent household, and none for the White Anglo-Saxon Catholic/Mormon/Lapsed Lutherans?

If only Congress would get the message that America’s president is president of all of America, and their efforts to bring down the nation to “get” Obama are not working, and should be stopped, I’d be a lot happier guy.

Minor update, March 17, 2012: Sorta as I feared/expected/realized-from-years-of-experience, the birthers are letting the current group of Republicans slide, so far as I, or they, can tell. Most of them are completely unaware that at least one candidate has a foreign-born father, most of them don’t know where or when the candidates were born or naturalized, and of course, because the Republicans are not Obama, they don’t really care. One birther claims to be sure that “others” are looking hard into these questions, experts. Shades of that other Harrison Ford movie, “Raiders of the Lost Ark:” What experts? “Top experts.” And shame on me for even asking the questions calling their bluff.

I predict Orly Taitz, Donald Trump, and all the other sideshow freaks and carnival barkers, will continue to bark away. Remember, when P. T. Barnum made a copy of the hoax “Cardiff Giant,” people paid a premium to see the fake of the hoax. P. T. Barnum’s ghost stalks and stomps on Republican and birther grounds now.

How many times have you heard the promise: The president could end this today if he’d just release his long form birth certificate? So now they’ve got the f—ing long form birth certificate, is it done for the Birthers?

Bigots. Probably no small amount of racism in there, too. Plus, they’ve exposed themselves as genuinely opposed to America’s good health. David Gardner and Milton Goldstein pegged it, even if we have to paraphrase them a bit: Had a foreign government tried to do what the birthers are doing, we’d have considered it an act of war. History is not kind to idlers, those who fail to call out injustice, nor idiots.

Watching tonight on television the charlatans who infest Pennsylvania Avenue gaudily pronounce their saintly motives and their deity-like powers to “guarantee world-class health care for every American” (as one creep put it to a NewsChannel 8 reporter here in DC) makes me want to vomit.

These people look like serious adults; the timber of their voices make them sound like serious adults; and their titles are ones that are assumed to be reserved for serious adults. But, in fact, these people – from Obama to Pelosi to Hoyer to Reid – are nothing of the sort.

If they really believe even a quarter of the things they say, they’re imbeciles. If they aren’t imbeciles, they’re scoundrels. No third alternative is conceivable.

Either way, they’re an utterly detestable bunch.

He’s talking about elected officials. He’s talking about the president of the United States. He calls them “utterly detestable.”

Dialogue and thought lie broken down this much? This is a rant one expects of certified lunatics like Orly Taitz.

Boudreaux, of course, comes from that class of the bourgeois where intellect is so congenital that it’s not even necessary to make a case for why one finds honorable people on the other side of an issue to be in error. To Boudreaux, they’ve gone beyond error. They are “detestable” people. You know, abominable. They are people worthy of hatred.

Demonization. Dehumanization. Objects worthy of hatred (a definition of “detestable) are not people who deserve respect. We don’t need to offer them health care, we don’t need to listen to their views, we don’t need to honor their civil rights.

It’s conduct unbecoming. Is Boudreaux so full of hubris that he cannot even entertain the idea that the bill is a good idea, the idea that Boudreaux may be a little bit in error?

We might also imagine that Don Boudreaux might get a good night’s sleep, wake up on Monday morning and rethink.

Somebody throw them a lifeline. Maybe they can figure it out. Churchill maybe put it best: Democracy is the worst form of government conceived by the mind of man, except for all the others. Sometimes you lose. Sometimes you should lose. Sometimes the people’s wisdom is greater than our own.

At the end of 2008, the scientists at East Anglia predicted that 2009 would be one of the warmest years on record:

On December 30, climate scientists from the UK Met Office and the University of East Anglia projected 2009 will be one of the top five warmest years on record. Average global temperatures for 2009 are predicted to be 0.4∞C above the 1961-1990 average of 14 ∫ C. A multiyear forecast using a Met Office climate model indicates a rapid return of global temperature to the long-term warming trend, with an increasing probability of record temperatures after 2009.

We know now that the alarmists’ prediction for 2009 didn’t come true. What’s interesting is that in January of this year, another climate alarmist named Mike MacCracken wrote to Phil Jones and another East Anglia climatologist, saying that their predicted warming may not occur . . .

Hinderaker quoting Anthony Watts’ chest thumping at Watts Up With That. In November, with cool weather in the local forecasts, they thought that 2009 would turn out to be a cold year, climate wise, and so they were demanding that climate scientists retract predictions and claims based on the data at hand. Watts was averaging his thermometer readings before they thermometers had been read.

2009 was tied for the second warmest year in the modern record, a new NASA analysis of global surface temperature shows. The analysis, conducted by the Goddard Institute for Space Studies (GISS) in New York City, also shows that in the Southern Hemisphere, 2009 was the warmest year since modern records began in 1880.

From NASA: "This map shows the 10-year average (2000-2009) temperature anomaly relative to the 1951-1980 mean. The largest temperature increases are in the Arctic and the Antarctic Peninsula. (Image credit: NASA/GISS)"

Climate science is in its infancy, and every proposition is controversial. What climate scientists like those at East Anglia don’t know dwarfs what they do know. They can produce a model for every occasion, but are the models any good? If so, which one? One thing we know for sure is that they don’t generate reliable predictions. In every scientific field other than global warming, a scientific hypothesis that generates false predictions is considered disproved. When it comes to global warming, however, there is no such thing as falsification. Which is the ultimate evidence that the alarmist scientists are engaged in a political enterprise, not a scientific one.

Really? Political commentary on climate science is in its infancy, and every proposition is controversial, even those that should not be. What ill-informed and sometimes ignorant, belligerent pundits like those at Powerline and Watts Up don’t know dwarfs what they do know. They can’t produce a model for any occasion, but they will ask as if they had anything to add other than heckling, “are the models any good? If so, which one?” One thing we know for sure is that they don’t generate accuracy in reporting or trustworthy claims. In every scientific field other than global warming, a scientific hypothesis that generates false predictions is considered disproved. When it comes to global warming’s critics and outright denialists, however, there is no such thing as falsification. There is, so far, no such thing as an honorable confession of error, either. In political commentary, anyone who makes a prediction in late November that is exactly wrong when the numbers are tallied two months later, should have the grace to make a concession speech. These ravings, and failure to strive for accuracy when error is apparent, provide ultimate evidence that the contrarians and denialists are not scientists, and are engaged in a political enterprise, not a scientific one. Hinderaker and Watts give their readers voodoo science at its most voodoo. They could not fail to know what they post is hoax, even if they were sucked in at first.

Even if they read this and understand it’s true and accurate, I’ll wager you won’t see any errata notices from either Watts or Hinderaker.

More, I’ll wager no one would take such a wager, not even their defenders.

Do all climate contrarians all take their marching orders from the faxes and e-mails from the GOP National Committee?

Not one of the contrarian’s work could survive half the scrutiny Phil Jones or Michael Mann has had since their server was broken into.

“Steve [Hayward] is also the author of the annual Index of Leading Environmental Indicators. The fourteenth edition of the Index was published in April by the Pacific Research Institute to coincide with Earth Day and Lenin’s birthday; it is accessible in PDF here.”

Why is the Pacific Research Institute timing a report to coincide with Lenin’s birthday? Why would Hinderaker even joke about it? No scientist is checking that date. No Democrat is. It’s like these guys study the old communists and fascists, not as a learning exercise to find mistakes to avoid as Santayana urged, but to steal the methods of the Stalinists and fascists.More snark than sense, more snark than science, at Powerline and the Pacific Research Institute.

The only remuneration IPCC scientists get – as a quick check of last week’s ad would have made clear — is travel costs and living expenses while they are at IPCC meetings. The IPCC work is on top of their day jobs as academics and researchers.

You know that denialists won’t apply to do the job. Most of us suspect they don’t have the courage of their convictions to do it, but there’s another problem: Very few of them are qualified. They don’t do science.

Dead Link?

We've been soaking in the Bathtub for several months, long enough that some of the links we've used have gone to the Great Internet in the Sky.
If you find a dead link, please leave a comment to that post, and tell us what link has expired.
Thanks!